Duke Orsino in Shakespeare's
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Duke Orsino in Shakespeare's
Pages: 11
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In a book on Twelfth Night, Dr. Leslie Hotson suggested that the play was written to compliment an Italian
nobleman, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano, in a court entertainment given for him on Twelfth Night, 1601, and
that it was after this gOrsinoh
that one of the principle characters was named. However, I am not sure id this
Italian Orsino would have feel complimented by seeing himself portrayed as a young, handsome and poetic duke
but an inefficient lover.
The curtain of Twelfth Night rises with Duke Orsinofsvery first speech: gIfmusic be the food of love, play on ch
which shows his characteristics clearly. Orsino is restless, dissatisfied, vacillating between moods, with a mind full
of romantic illusions, but without an object upon which his mind can rest and with which his desire can engage.
Then we have the hunting metaphor that Orsino compares himself to Actaeon, who turned into a stag and
pursued by his own hounds of desire. This metaphor, though is full of with Orsinofsself-pity, still shows that he is
introspective to a degree. We may say that Orsino is madly in love (to be more specific, madly wants to be in love),
but not mad, for he is aware that he himself is overwhelmed by his own fantastical love thoughts.
If music is the food of love, as Orsino puts it, we can infer what Orsinofslove is like by what kind of gfoodh
he
feeds it. Orsinofsspecial taste for those goldand antichsongs, traditional love-laments, makes him a Petrarchan
lover: he is sensitive, passionate, and intoxicated with his own romantic sufferings from Oliviafsrejection.
The repeated rejections by Olivia do not throw Orsino into despair....
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